“What do they do?” McBride said. “I mean, what do they really do?”
“How’d you meet ’em?”
“They came looking for me. I had something to sell and they thought they might buy, but it didn’t quite work out.”
“What was it, something tricky?”
McBride nodded. “Yeah. A little.”
Overby took a swallow of his beer. “Well,” he said, “I’ve known ’em for damn near ten years and that’s what they’ve always done — something just a little bit tricky.”
McBride drank some beer and then sat down on the couch. “But they re smart, aren’t they? Both of them. I mean, they’re the kind of guys that don t make too many mistakes.”
After thinking about the question for a moment, Overby took another swallow of his beer and said, “Well, now, I don’t know if they never made any mistakes, but they’re smart, all right. Especially the Chinaman.”
“I thought Durant sort of had the edge.”
“Well, he’s no dummy either, but that Artie Wu is one smart Chinaman, and a smart Chinaman is just about twice as smart as anybody else.”
“I don’t know if you’re gonna believe this, but I don’t even know what they’re up to.”
“Well, I don’t either exactly, but as long as the money’s okay I don’t care just one hell of a lot. What about you?”
“No,” McBride said after a moment, “I don’t guess I really care either.”
At 5:30 that morning, the eighteenth of June, a Saturday, Solly Gesini was asleep in his bedroom on the second floor of his house on Medio Drive in Brentwood when the phone began to ring.
Gesini came awake slowly. He didn’t snatch up the ringing phone. Instead, he lay there alone in his bed trying to divine what misfortune had struck. He knew with absolute certainty that it wasn’t going to be good news — not at 5:30 in the morning.
Finally, on the tenth ring, he picked up the phone and said hello.
The man’s voice that replied was both loud and excited. “I’m gonna sue you, you cocksucker!”
Solly Gesini woke up. “Who’s-this-who’s-this?” he said, running the words together, even stumbling over them a little.
“It’s me, you dirty wop son of a bitch, that’s who.”
“Oh,” Gesini said. “You. How’re ya, Ferdie?” Ferdie was Ferdinando Fiorio, his brother-in-law.
“I’ll tell you how I am. I just called my lawyer. That’s how I am. He’s gonna sue your ass.”
“Sue? What’s all this sue shit?”
“They’re on the way, Solly. I didn’t know nothing about it. I told ’em that. I told them they wanta find out about it, you’re the guy. That’s what my lawyer says, too. Boy, are we gonna sue your ass.”
“You don’t make sense, Ferdie. But you don’t make sense at noon, so why should you make any at five-thirty in the fuckin’ morning? Just calm down and tell me one thing — who’s on the way?”
“The sheriff, that’s who.”
“What sheriff?”
“What sheriff? The sheriff who found it, that’s who. I don’t know if it is the real sheriff. There were two of ’em. Young kids with mustaches. Maybe deputy sheriffs. Anyway, they found it.”
“Found what?”
“My thirty-two-thousand-dollar Winnebago, that’s what.”
“Where’d they find it?”
“Down at the bottom of a canyon all burned up, not a fuckin’ thing left everything ruined, and you said you were gonna borrow it to go up to Big Bear and I oughta know by now never to believe anything you ever tell me and you just wait, am I gonna sue your ass.”
“What canyon?” Gesini said.
“What canyon? I don’t know — Latigo Canyon out in Malibu. I think it’s Latigo. I think that’s what they said. And those two guys you sent over to borrow it, that big nigger and that other one with the bald head, the white guy, Tony what’s-his-name. There ain’t nothing left of them neither. I shoulda known better. The only reason I did it was because of Anna-Maria, you never take her anywhere, and I thought she’d like to get up to Big Bear and—”
Gesini cut him off. “There were just two guys in it?”
“Yeah, two guys. I told ’em that the nigger and that other one, Tony, had borrowed it for you and they asked me how big they were and when I told ’em they said they think that they probably’re the two who got burned up in it. I don’t think my insurance is gonna cover this. One of ’em was shot. I don’t know which one. I told ’em I didn’t know anything. I told ’em to go to talk to you about people getting shot. I told ’em you knew all about that. I told ’em—”
Solly Gesini didn’t listen to what else his brother-in-law had told the Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs. Instead, he slowly hung up the phone. They fucked it up, he thought. Tony and Icky. They let the kid take ’em somehow. Jesus, I’m gonna have to tell Mr. Simms something. I’m gonna have to figure that out. But later. Yeah, I’ll do that later.
Gesini nestled slowly back in the bed. He drew his knees up as far as he could, pulled the sheet up over his head, and waited for the deputy sheriffs to arrive.
Chapter 15
At a little past six that Saturday morning Quincy Durant was standing out on the redwood deck of his rented yellow house dressed in a pair of light gray slacks and a blue lamb’s-wool pullover sweater. He stood with a mug of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and watched as Randall Piers came down the beach at a brisk walk, the six greyhounds bunched at his heels.
When he was still some distance away, perhaps fifty yards, Piers waved at Durant, who waved back and then held up the coffee mug, pointing at it with the hand that held his cigarette. Durant could see Piers nod his head at the invitation.
Neither man spoke until Piers started up the steps. Then he said, “You know something?”
“What?”
“They miss half of it.”
“Who?”
“People who live on the beach. They pay a lot to live here and then they never get up in time to watch the sun rise. What a waste.”
“You’ve got a point,” Durant said politely.
Piers shook his head. “Not much of one. Just my thought for the day. You got any of that coffee of yours left?”
“Sure.”
Piers made one of his abrupt, nearly brutal hand gestures and the six greyhounds promptly flopped down on the deck. Two of them yawned at each other, one of them gnawed at something that seemed lodged in his paw, and the other three looked around with the interested, curious gaze of the knowledgeable tourist who never gets bored.
Inside the house, Durant poured Piers a cup of coffee and warmed up his own. They moved into the living room, where Piers looked around, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. Then the puzzlement vanished and he turned to Durant. “You had them take it out, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“The Reuters ticker.”
“Yesterday. We had them take it out late yesterday.”
“You covered, huh?”
“Yeah, we did. It seemed about time.”
Randall Piers ran yesterday’s closing prices through his head. “You made some money.”
“A little. Our broker said we should have hung in there awhile longer, but what the hell. We made enough.”
“So,” Randall Piers said, lowering himself into the leather chair that Eddie McBride had bled on a little the night before. “You said you were going to take a run down to Pelican Bay.”
“We did. Yesterday.”
“What’d you find out?”
“Something’s happening down there.”
“What?”